Exhibition "O.K.! - But is it photography?"

Students of Prof. Achim Mohné at the Faculty of Design present their work at the exhibition "O.K.! - But is it photography?" in Gallery 52 of the Folkwang University of the Arts. Admission is free. Opening is on January 8, 2026.

With the introduction of 3D technologies and artificial intelligence, photographic authenticity is undergoing a paradigmatic change. New digital tools are creeping into traditional image aesthetics and shifting the boundaries of what was previously understood as photography. The question arises as to whether the term "photography" is still contemporary under today's technological conditions or can already be considered historical.

The exhibition "O.K.! - But is it Photography?" sees itself as a field of experimentation. It aims more to formulate questions than to provide answers. On display are 15 photography-based works and transmedia projects that, as "expanded photography", self-referentially reflect and critically analyze digital, pictorial means, apparatuses and systems. Production processes and expanded distribution techniques can play a more decisive role for photographs today than the image itself, as can the increasingly complex algorithms that determine the channels of reception.

Among the exhibits are AI-based reinterpretations of the classic photo book "The Americans", a 360-degree camera-obscura-photo-film hybrid apparatus, large-format bullet holes in Bosnian house walls as a point cloud, AI-generated historical printing techniques, an AI sculpture retransferred from virtuality, photogrammetric urban landscapes without a central perspective, deep-fake political magazines, video sculptures around "unruly bodies", Ansel Adams' famous photo "The Tetons and the Snake River" as a 3D model or staged AI-based beer table interpretations.

The positions on display open up debates about the means needed not only to ensure the credibility of photography-based content, but also to defend its raison d'être. In the process, questions about a new image ethic come into focus, as do the conditions to which imaging processes are subject. The artistic strategies that develop from these conditions are as diverse as they are challenging.

Let us ask ourselves the question in the future: Are we allowed to take photographs today or do we have to prompt again?